As my boots (and, I imagine, the boots of many others) have bootstraps, I was somewhat surprised that the definitions in Word A Day did not include "a looped strap sewed at the side or the rear top of a boot to help in pulling it on."

When the power button of a computer is pressed to turn it on, the first thing it does is Booting. It has programs called 'boot-loader' or 'bootstrap-loader' which does the bootstrapping for the computer to eventually get it 'running', smoothly.

I have tennis shoes, or sneakers, whatever, that have these
loops as well: bootstraps.

WELCOME GREG

WELCOME pMAN

"This week in AWAD we'll cover you with words from head to toe, metaphorically speaking. We'll start with a hat and make our way down to boots."

This week Anu only gave the metaphorical meanings and etymologies.

"In computing, booting or bootstrapping is to load a fixed sequence of instructions in a computer to initiate the operating system. Earliest documented use: 1891."

I had no idea!

Peter

I suspect the computer definition came a few years later.

The first computer I used, a mini, PDP-8/E has a piece of paper on the front panel with the bootstrap sequence in machine language (octal code) that you had to punch in, to get the OS off the hard drive (a whopping 5 MB) loaded into core memory (an expensive 16K). Summer of '73 IIRC.

One of my early favorites in science fiction: Heinlein's By His Bootstraps. That may be where I first heard the term.

Read that, long ago, myself. Enjoyed it.

Not much Heinlein I don't enjoy.

A real master, especially when there is so much out there
that is weak by comparison.